Please join us for an exhibition walkthrough of Typecasting: Photographing the Peoples of India ahead of its closing as the curator Sudeshna Guha takes us through the historical photographs for critical reflection on the systems of classification and on the typologies that were created in the colonial period, which photography made to seem real and natural. Spanning nearly sixty-five years, from 1855 to 1920, the exhibition brings together close to 200 rare photographs and photographic material of early Indian photography in the country.

Typecasting: Photographing the Peoples of India 1855–1920, an IAF parallel exhibition, showcases one of the largest and most significant collections of colonial ethnographic photographs of the diverse peoples of India, spanning geographies and cultures. Mapping the diversity of people across a vast geography from the northeastern Lepcha and Bhutia tribes to the Afridis of Sind in the northwest and the Todas of the Nilgiris in the south; and from rich Parsee and Gujarati communities to people from the lowest-income groups such as dancing girls, coolies, barbers and snake charmers, the exhibition demonstrates that early ethnographic photography in India not only documented the country’s diversity but actively defined the social and economic groups.